Unravel a bizarre murder in free detective game Scotch Broom

Created for Scream City, a horror-themed game jam, the delightfully named Scotch Broom is a Twine-based interactive fiction game set in rainy Seattle. It's exactly like an interactive episode of Frasier, only with talking wounds in place of neurotic psychiatrists, and with horrible murder instead of—wait, did I just say talking wounds?

Scotch Broom is a A Bit Weird, in the Twin Peaks sense: a blend of darkness and weirdness that's hugely impressive as a multimedia browser game. It's a story you click through, as you might expect from a Twine game, but where every scene is accompanied by an image, and every line of dialogue is voiced.

It's a better game than most at establishing a moody, noir atmosphere, with surprisingly good voice acting and sound effects to compliment the intriguing detective story. It's just a shame that that story ends so abruptly, and without any real resolution—but this is an engaging mystery, while it lasts.

Thanks, Warp Door.

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.